Plugin: Administration Improvements

Customize Admin, Admin Customization

Basics: Customizing Your WordPress Admin Classes to encapsulate access to admin menu global arrays: wp-admin-menu-classes.php

Plugins:

• Admin and Site Enhancements
• WP Custom Admin Interface

Improving Admin Menu

• Admin Menu Editor is perfect, but only in Pro version you get some advanced options. Also includes plugin hiding functionality, that lets you hide plugins from other users. But I can go around those limits in combination with other plugins (Members).

  How? Introduce new custom role (Supporter) by creating a new role in Members plugin and add only Supreme Commander (myself) to that role. Now edit Admin menu as required, but restricting only to that Role

  Also, you can move menu items, but only in Pro version, you can do it between menu levels.

• Adminimize | [bueltge/adminimize from the respected author, lets you hide or customize areas of the administration area, but I find its UI confusing.

New:

• Missing Menu Items

Improving Admin Toolbar

Admin Bar Fix to auto-hide bar but still have a small icon.

Selection is Admin Toolbar Menus.

• So, the best solution, and really quite good, is Admin Toolbar Menus, and it’s cleanly coded. It is also nicely integrated in WordPress native Menu system of options.

• Custom Admin Bar is a plugin from famous WPMU DEV team, but the problem in it that it really nags a user to buy a premium.

Administration area explained: Administration Screens

Admin Notices

• afragen/wp-dismiss-notice: Add time dismissible admin notices to WordPress
• WordPress Themes Team, official: WPTT/admin-notices: Package for standardizing how themes output admin notices.

Display IDs in Admin Columns

While it is not overly complicated to add an ID column in the admin area, it’s better to use a plugin for it, if it is correctly written.

• Reveal IDs is by far the most popular and works as it should
• Show IDs by DraftPress is second best in popularity
• Show IDs by Echo Plugins has the advantage that the ID can be displayed in two places, next to the item and in the column, so this plugin is the one I like the most. In my opinion, it’s often useful to have an alternative position when columns are scarce.
• Add ID Column
• LH Add ID Columns
• Show Pages IDs

Interesting article on How to Display Post and Page IDs in the WordPress Admin

Custom sortable columns: here

WP Adminify plugin is an unmitigated disaster. I tried the demo version of this plugin and it changed WordPress beyond recognition. If you want to offer someone a whitelabel version of WP, fine. But seen like this - it’s disgusting. It even has a very useful feature, Media Library Folders, but still - Wordpress admin looks hideous.

Even though it looks like you can turn everything off - you really can’t. What a mess - they really went overboard!

• WP Admin Cleaner by dplugins.com is paid, but not expensive.

• Scripts Organizer by dplugins.com is nice and not expensive